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Gardiner gives us unique perspective on the city

Toronto has only begun to get creative with the highway’s neglected underbelly.

Gardiner Streams by Toronto artist Katherine Harvey was created from photos of cars speeding along the Gardiner and layered on top of each other to produce a blur of speed. The installation, attached to the Quartz condo towers, faces the expressway. (Rick Madonik / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

City staff recently recommended that a 2.4-kilometre section of the Gardiner Expressway from Jarvis to the Don River be dismantled in favour of a wide surface street (RENE JOHNSTON / TORONTO STAR file photo)

Douglas Coupland’s Red Canoe peeking out from the top of Canoe Landing Park is visible to drivers on the Gardiner. (Tara Walton / Toronto Star file photo)

Toronto’s hate-love-hate affair with the Gardiner Expressway is on again as city staff recently recommended that a 2.4-kilometre elevated section of the highway from Jarvis to the Don River be dismantled in favour of a wide surface street. The debate over the Gardiner’s fate is far from over, but given that the cost of tearing it down is considerably cheaper than the other options — repairing it, rebuilding it, or keeping it with improvements — Toronto’s historic proclivity for doing things as cheaply as possible may be the expressway’s ultimate doom.

Its commuter merits aside, there are a few aspects of this linear chunk of 1950s concrete this will be missed, like the view of the city it provides. From a car, but even better high up in a bus, passing through Toronto along the Gardiner is one of the most visceral ways to experience this city, as close as we may ever get to the Jetsons speeding along airborne freeways through Orbit City in their flying cars.

A Toronto friend in the mid-1990s described this view as seeing the city as if it was a circuit board, with people and vehicles zipping about down below. He said this well before the condo boom, when downtown Toronto’s skyline was much smaller and parking lots dominated the land along the Gardiner. Today the gentle curves of the expressway weaves in between buildings, some hugging the roadway so close the brand of appliances in condo kitchens can be discerned.

Though all this development adjacent to the Gardiner receives a fair amount of snark from condo haters who will take any opportunity to take a shot at condo owners, these buildings have effectively swallowed up the highway, turning what is sometimes called a barrier to the waterfront into just one small part of the cityscape. Look along Yonge, Bay, or Bathurst Sts. to see how the Gardiner no longer dominates the landscape.

Around Bathurst, the area underneath the highway near the new condo entrances has been made rather nice in a few places, with paving stones, colourful concrete shapes, and bike racks that are protected from rain. Toronto has only begun to get creative with the highway’s neglected underbelly. Nearby, on the still under-construction Quartz condo towers, a new piece of public art called “Gardiner Streams” has been installed facing the highway. Created by Toronto artist Katherine Harvey, colourful ribbons created from photos of cars speeding along the Gardiner have been layered on top of each other creating a blur of speed. It, along with Douglas Coupland’s Red Canoe peeking out from the top of Canoe Landing Park, might make this the fastest art gallery in the world.

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None of this is enough of a reason to keep it up, but if the Gardiner goes down some parts of it should be preserved as a monument to this time in Toronto’s history when the car was king, like the preserved pillars on Lake Shore Blvd. E. near Leslie St. that were part of a previously demolished part of the Gardiner. Perhaps a small section could remain up and be turned into a park, a small version of Manhattan’s High Line park that was built on an old elevated rail line. Imagine one of the existing on ramps pedestrianized and landscaped so we could walk up and view our city the way we used to.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef

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